Surgical procedures are often used to treat and cure a wide range of diseases, conditions, and injuries. Surgery often requires access to internal tissue through open surgical procedures or endoscopic surgical procedures. The term “endoscopic” refers to all types of minimally invasive surgical procedures including laparoscopic, arthroscopic, natural orifice intraluminal, and natural orifice transluminal procedures. Endoscopic surgery has numerous advantages compared to traditional open surgical procedures, including reduced trauma, faster recovery, reduced risk of infection, and reduced scarring. Endoscopic surgery is often performed with an insufflatory fluid present within the body cavity, such as carbon dioxide or saline, to provide adequate space to perform the intended surgical procedures. The insufflated cavity is generally under pressure and is sometimes referred to as being in a state of pneumoperitoneum. Surgical access devices are often used to facilitate surgical manipulation of internal tissue while maintaining pneumoperitoneum. For example, trocars are often used to provide a port through which endoscopic surgical instruments are passed. Trocars generally have an instrument seal, which prevents the insufflatory fluid from escaping while an instrument is positioned in the trocar.
Other camera and surgical tool guiding systems have been disclosed. For example, Magnetic anchoring and guidance systems (MAGS) have been developed for use in minimally invasive procedures. MAGS include an internal device attached in some manner to a surgical instrument, or camera or other viewing device, and an external hand held device or external control unit (“ECU”) for controlling the movement of the internal device. Each of the external and internal devices has magnets, which are magnetically coupled to each other across, for example, a patient's abdominal wall. In the current systems, the external magnet may be adjusted by varying the height of the external magnet.
While surgical access devices are known, no one has previously made or used the surgical devices and methods in accordance with the present invention.